Category Archives: Themes and Issues in My Writing

How Many American Bodies?

 

How many American bodies had he sent home in the course of his career? Neal Hudson had not kept count, but he figured it must be close to fifty.

Dept of StateSo begins my novel, Distant Thunder, the story of Neal Hudson, a U.S. Foreign Service professional. Distant Thunder, like several of my books, deals with a Foreign Service officer, the official name for a U.S. diplomat. Most Americans have no idea our government has a Foreign Service. Thus, I often create a scene in my novels in which the officer has to explain what he or she does.

On rare visits to the States, strangers he’d meet in a hotel or a car rental would ask what he did for a living. He’d fumble around trying to explain. “I’m a consular officer.”

Raised eyebrows. “Oh?”

“A Foreign Service officer.”

“In the military, you mean?”

No, Neal says, and explains about overseas Americans and how Foreign Service officers notify loved ones when an American citizen dies overseas. They see that bodies are sent home. They visit imprisoned Americans and American children living with non-American parents. They perform more mundane tasks, acting as a notary in foreign countries and renewing passports.

Neal serves as a consular officer. Other specialities include political, economic, administrative, and security, to name a few.

Like professionals everywhere—firefighters, police officers, the military, nurses—Foreign Service officers are proud of their service and can never fully explain it to the uninitiated. The interweaving of tragedy, comedy, and an occasional happy ending with a touch of the exotic provides infinite plots for story telling.

Scribblings From Exile

 

After fourteen years as a U.S. Foreign Service officer, I returned to the United States and to writing as my chief occupation. OakTara published five of my novels, and I created a blog with the tag, “Scribblings from Exile.” The theme of the first novel, Singing in Babylon, originated in the prophet Jeremiah’s exhortation from God to Jewish exiles to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile.”

As a Foreign Service officer, I was assigned to several countries where Christian believers were a tiny minority. After returning to the United States, I realized I am as much in exile in my native country as I was in those alien cultures. Christians are part of a “subversive” minority, the theologian, Walter Brueggemann, has said, a subversive problem in the consumer-oriented West.

At Christian writers conferences, editors and agents told me that American Christians were not interested in books with global settings. At a conference about a year ago, I asked a question in one of the seminars about my interests. At the close of the seminar, a man followed me down the hall and we talked.

We found our ideas compatible, although we work in different spheres. My blogs cover a broad landscape, anything that touches on Christians in exile from the mainstream, with a special emphasis on the Middle East. Dr. Lloyd Johnson’s concern is Israel/Palestine and a desire that justice be done there. We are committed Christians. We both hope American Christians will better understand the rest of the world, including that spot of the planet we call the Holy Land.

living-stones-cover-image1Dr. Johnson, a surgeon, has traveled widely, including trips to the Holy Land, and has written a novel to be released this year. I’m delighted to give him space to introduce his book, in this site’s next blog, because he is both knowledgeable and passionate in his writing. His enthusiasm has given me new hope that other Christian exiles will join with us in studying these issues.

Behind the Scenes When a VIP Travels Abroad

 

President Obama is scheduled to return home today from his trip to the Middle East. The schedule for his trip fits on one sheet of paper. Behind the scenes, complex planning bolsters each phase, as American embassy and consulate staffs direct every detail.

I was never in on a visit from a trip by the U.S. president when I worked at U.S. diplomatic posts overseas, but I remember one by the United States First Lady and several by the Secretary of State. Embassy officers planned official meetings, visits to tourism sites, and gifts to be given. “Control” officers were assigned each major player to guide their every move. You didn’t want an official lost while trying to find the way to a restroom. Security, drivers, and routes had to be plotted in the minutest detail, not to mention interpreters for different languages.

Searching for HomeSome of the preparation for a high-level visit made its way into my novel Searching for Home, the story of Hannah and Patrick’s journey toward a deeper relationship while a part of embassy communities. Patrick, a political officer in charge of the visit of a high level visitor, bemoans the visitor’s choice of the time to visit, during a local holiday.

“That’s the way it usually is. They come on our holidays, not theirs.”

Hannah, his new wife, recently arrived to embassy life, asks what’s involved.

“We have to arrange meetings. Photo ops. Every minute, all the logistics, even the drivers have to be plotted like a movie spectacular. Prepare briefings about everybody she’ll meet. Do up talking points. Write up her speeches. . . . We’re thinking about a trip to one of the tourist hotels on the edge of the Sahara. Maybe take her to Kairouan to look at the rugs they weave there.”

Kitchen DebateDespite the work, high level visits allow face-to-face meetings in local space that can lead to better understanding between nations. The “kitchen” debate between President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev at the American National Exhibition in Moscow in July 1959 remains a classic to this day.

“The shrewd Khrushchev came away from his personal duel of words with Nixon persuaded that the advocate of capitalism was not just tough-minded but strong-willed,” wrote William Safire in The New York Times.

Time as Character

 

In my novel Quiet Deception, one of the “characters” is the time in which it is set. The period is the era between 1944 and 1977.

World War IIAt the beginning of this era, the United States led her allies to defeat the Axis powers, Germany and Japan. Wars dramatically change the social fabric, and World War II, so immense and terrible, was bound to spawn changes that reverberate today.

Most other countries were either exhausted by the conflict or undeveloped. The United States entered the world stage as the premier nation, following other civilizations that previously knew a period of glory.

We Americans reached a material level unparalleled in history. We became the strongest economically and militarily. Dishwashers and the pill, microwaves and woman’s liberation, suburbs and open marriage changed our society. Christians didn’t realize it at the time, but their influence hit a high point before entering a time of great challenge.

Quiet DeceptionIt is this period which becomes one of the characters of Quiet Deception.

The main protagonists, a college professor and one of his students, stake out new territory. Along with their friends and colleagues, they cross the margin from the older world to the one we know today.

Within the framework of an unsolved mystery, the characters reach decisions about the paths they will take from the many that the times offer. What will they retain from the older world? Though they interact with each other, they interact also with those times of change.

Algeria In the News Again

 

Following is a quote from my novel, A SENSE OF MISSION. The heroine, Kaitlin Sadler, is working at the U.S. Embassy in Algiers, Algeria, in 1993:

Bruce came in one morning while I was scanning the morning’s French and Arab newspapers . . .  He showed me the piece of paper, printed in Arabic. “Gabir brought this in. Seems the FIS is circulating it throughout Algiers.”

I read it. “They want all foreigners out of Algeria within 30 days or they’re vowing to—the word is exterminate, I believe—exterminate the foreigners, I mean.”

I handed it back. “I presume they’re particularly interested in the oil company workers.”

“They’d like to shut down the oil industry here. Oil is the main revenue source for the government they hope to topple.”

“And set up an Islamist government on the model of Iran, I suppose.”

The story is fictitious. However, the events mirror the Algeria where I worked in the latter part of 1993. The words hint of today’s headlines about the taking of oil workers as hostages, including Americans, by extremists.

Kaitlin is introduced to Algiers through her sponsor, Adele, when she first arrives. Her observations suggest one reason for the growth of the insurgent groups that began terrorizing Algeria in the 1990’s, when I was there, and continue today.

“They’re called ‘wall-holders,’” Adele said as we crawled through the neighborhoods of Algiers in her car. I had remarked on the young men who stood around, seemingly with nothing to do.

“I knew the unemployment rate was high,” I said, “but I guess I didn’t know it had affected the youth that much.”

“The official unemployment rate is about 20 percent, but we think it’s more like half the population of those between eighteen and twenty-five.”

And on an official trip through the countryside, Kaitlin observes:

We met with American workers at an oil-processing facility close to Oran. They gave us hard hats to walk around the plant and told us they felt safe enough, that they trusted the Algerians to guard them from the beginnings of terrorism. After all, the Algerians had to have the oil. . . oil was Algeria’s main source of revenue. The country had neglected its agriculture for decades in pursuit of the black gold the world so craved.

For more on Algeria, see the country page on this site.

 

 

Advent and Arc Lines

 

A novel or a movie contains what are called arcs: stories within stories, if you like. Each character follows an individual arc, a story line within a story, as he or she reacts to the events that make up the plot.

A separate arc may trace a relationship between two of the characters, as in a love story. Still another arc follows the story’s main “problem.” It can be a mystery or perhaps a secret which the story uncovers or a moral choice or a resolution toward which the story works as it progresses.

Seldom are all the arcs revealed at the same time. One may influence the other, but each has its own life: beginning, middle, end. Characters never know all the arcs in the story that they inhabit.

I think of real life like that, too. Some process begins, perhaps known to only a few people, until it bursts on the scene, influencing millions. The awful tragedy in Connecticut was the culmination of arc lines from many stories, some of which we will never know. Some witnesses to the tragedy will change the paths they were intending to go and live different stories than they planned before the tragedy unfolded. We can choose to change our arcs.

We ponder the evil in the world, the innocents who suffer. Events tempt us to despair. Yet, we don’t know all the arcs in the story. Advent is a symbol of waiting, waiting for all arcs to end, finally, for the conquest of darkness with light. We wait with faith for the arc to play out that began with a baby born in Palestine two millennia ago.

Bring Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses . .

 

Regardless of which political party won which offices in the recent election, immigration issues will no doubt be a part of congressional consideration in the next few years.

As a consular officer working for the U.S. State Department, I interviewed foreign nationals for both temporary visas and visas for permanent residence in the United States. Interviews for legal immigration were rewarding, often dealing with those who were elated at reaching their dream of living in the United States. These immigrants often had family who had immigrated to the United States before them. Others had earned their visas because their job skills were needed by an American employer.

In contrast, my interviews of those applying for temporary visits to the States exhausted me and the other U.S. visa officers. We knew that a significant percentage of the applicants hoped to use the temporary process to gain entry to the U.S. and then remain there, legally or illegally. We sometimes had to interview hundreds of applicants each day. The vast numbers required us to decide within minutes what were the intentions of the person before us. No wonder we were exhausted.

I found visa work to be not only exhausting but depressing. I disliked having the power to destroy people’s dreams, people who wanted nothing more than to escape often oppressive and/or poverty-stricken situations. These feelings found their way into the lives of two visa interviewers in my novels, Kaitlin in A Sense of Mission and Hannah in Searching for Home.

No immigration law will be perfect. More people still want to live in the United States than we can possibly accommodate. Web sites can aid us in making rational decisions about our immigration policies. You might begin with the Department of Homeland Security.

 

Risk

 

Linked to the end of this blog is a short story, “Risk,” that I wrote several years ago and never published. The part that risk-taking plays in faith intrigues me, especially during times of change.

Stories in the Bible touch on risk as a first step of faith: the Hebrews had to step into the Jordan River before the waters stopped flowing so they could cross. Jesus told the man with the withered hand to stretch out that hand to begin the healing process. Four unnamed men took the risk of bringing their friend to Christ for healing. Why is faith involved?

As a society becomes less religious, we tend to leave religion behind, almost without realizing it, or only give it lip service. To choose a faith as the polestar of our lives during such a time requires a definite commitment, a taking of a risk.

I used “Risk” to explore these ideas.

What Is Global Fiction?

 

I fancy I still hear the call to prayer from the mosque beside the U.S. embassy compound, though I’m a grown woman now.

In the opening scene to my novel A Sense of Mission, the young protagonist, Kaitlin, the daughter of U.S. diplomats in a Muslim majority country, is wakened by the Islamic call to prayer. Her family is Christian. Her mother points out that the faithfulness of Muslims to their prayers might shame some Christians who rarely pray. She suggests that Kaitlin be reminded to pray to Jesus by the call to prayer.

That idea was one I carried out when I lived in the Middle East and heard the Muslim call to prayer five times each day. I decided to use it as a reminder to practice my Christian devotions. It was a reminder that an effective Christian life requires an active prayer life.

Many of us grew up in a country greatly influenced by the teachings of Christianity. We are only now understanding that those of us who call ourselves Christians actually are a minority in the world, about a third according to most counts. Lives immersed in the Internet and virtual communities remind us that we do indeed live in a global village. The increasing presence of other religions, or of no religion, jolts us.

The years I spent in foreign countries influenced me to write what I call “fiction for the global Christian,” to suggest the examination of life from a global viewpoint. Characters in such fiction struggle with personal faith issues, they fall in love, and they deal with family problems as in other fiction. In the midst of these conflicts, however, they understand Christianity as Jesus-centered for the whole world rather than centered exclusively on domestic American issues.

Other examples of global fiction include: When the Lion Roars by DiAnn Mills; Allah’s Fire by Chuck Holton and Gayle Roper; and Lion of Babylon by Davis Bunn.

 

How Did Our Exciting Story Become so Irrelevant To So Many?

 

Following is a scene from my novel A Sense of Mission. The scene follows an unsuccessful attempt to find a church home by three Christians:

We headed to a nearby Greek restaurant and took a table in the back to avoid standing out in our good clothes.

“So?” Ethan said, after we had ordered.

Matilda sighed and unfolded her napkin.

I said, “It’s amazing. All these high rises around. Lots more people, probably, than when the church was in the middle of a suburb, but the church seems to be dying.”

Matilda moved to one side to allow the server to fill her water glass. “I guess they’re doing their best to meet the needs of a changing neighborhood. Did you see the signs for two other groups that meet in the church? One Spanish, I think, not sure about the other.”

“Vietnamese,” said Ethan. “But one group seems almost totally absent, even though it’s probably the largest one in the neighborhood.”

“You mean the middle-class professionals enjoying a leisurely Sunday morning in their apartments and condos?” I asked.

“Right. How come Christians can’t seem to reach this group?”

I shrugged. “Look at the building. It fit fine with the architecture of the single-family suburb. Now it reminds me of those European cathedrals—kind of a dinosaur as far as relevance to the way people live today.”

“But why isn’t it relevant anymore?” Ethan asked. “That’s why the people don’t come now—the church doesn’t seem relevant to them. For the most part, they aren’t atheists or hostile to the church. They’re just indifferent to it. How did our exciting story become so irrelevant to so many?”

Eventually, Ethan answers his own question: “Christ isn’t tame, is he? He doesn’t wait in a box for us to open it on Sunday mornings. If you find where that Christ is, let me know. It’ll be scary, but I want that.”

Where does that Christ dwell, personified as Aslan in the Narnia tales as “not a tame lion”? What are the characteristics of a Christian gathering, or a Christian life, with that Christ at its center?

 

 

To Community

 

A journalist friend of mine coined the verb phrase “to community.” He said we needed a verb form for the act of coming together in kinship-minded groups.

The protagonists in my stories often “community.” Their stories are sewn within the larger fabric of history, but the characters meld into community as they resolve issues in their lives. I don’t plan it that way, but for some reason, my characters can’t operate without this fellowship. It may be one of expatriate Americans in a foreign locale, or an impromptu group formed on a train, or a new family by marriage. The stories involve all kinds of plots, but the community forms in the midst of the action.

In Singing in Babylon, Kate and Philip find community in a home church in Saudi Arabia, then with Philip’s family. In Quiet Deception, a mystery set on a college campus, four students form friendships while some of their professors share shortcomings with their colleagues. In Searching for Home, Christian families bond in embassy communities in the Middle East as terrorism threatens. In Distant Thunder, it’s a group of strugglers who meet on a train, between Washington and Seattle, each at a decision point in their lives.

Communities are formed sometimes by age or interest and sometimes by circumstances that turn acquaintances into friends, then into members of a community. As my characters live out their stories, they teach me that Christianity is very much a community religion.

Stories Within Stories

 

A novel may unfold on several levels.  The first is the entertainment level. One can read it for pleasure and be perfectly satisfied. The story may also suggest deeper elements, if the reader wishes to explore them.

My newest novel, Distant Thunder, (OakTara Publishers), is, on one level, a romance. A divorced mom facing her only child’s deployment to Afghanistan, deals with anxiety over that, as well as the boring muddle her life has become. On a train ride, she meets a U.S. diplomat grieving the death of his wife in a car accident in the Middle East after a marital quarrel. A close friend was killed in a car accident a couple of weeks later. A coincidence? Was betrayal to country involved?

The two edge toward cautious friendship, but always with past hurts simmering below the surface.

So there you have it: a romance with a bit of mystery, even intrigue, thrown into the plot.

If you wish, you can fish for deeper elements, also.

Following are excerpts from a review by Bruce Judisch, who understood the different strands.

In Distant Thunder, Ms. O’Barr has melded a personal journey of searching and restoration with a candid, point-blank look at American culture and faith.  Okay, that’s been done before.  A lot.  But what makes this book unique is the author’s perspective on America through the eyes of Americans who have spent a considerable portion of their adult lives outside of America.   . . .

(Excerpted from  http://brucejudisch.blogspot.com/  May 13, 2012.)

You can read it for pure entertainment or go deeper, as you wish.

Distant Thunder: When Religions Compete

 

One of the underlying themes of my latest novel, Distant Thunder, as in my other stories, is the place of faith in a world where religious views are either abandoned or seized with fervor. It is a time when religions increasingly compete and sometimes cause suffering.

Distant Thunder can be read as a love story between two people no longer young who carry baggage from past choices. On another level, the characters, of varying shades of religious conviction, deal with other issues. They struggle to define faith, or even to accept faith, within a time that asks if faith does more harm than good.

Though Americans, they see domestic issues of their country through a global lens. The main protagonists are Christian, because I know more about Christians, being one myself. Yet they are interested in other religions, foreign affairs, and current events, areas not usually a subject of this type of fiction. Like characters from my previous novels, they are rooted in time and place because their struggles are the struggles of a particular  time and place: American Christians since the end of World War II to the post 9/11 era.

It is against this background that the characters change and mature in ways they would not in a purely domestic setting. Christianity is, after all, a world religion.

Thoughts On Themes As My Latest Book Is Published

The main protagonists in my stories suffer the death of loved ones, marriage breakups, career stress, romantic relationships, and challenges to childhood dreams. Deeper conflicts underlie these issues. Usually the characters are Americans of the Christian persuasion. But their conventional Christianity often is jarred by sojourns in countries influenced by other religions.

After the characters experience their faith as a minority religion, they can no longer accept it simply because it was a part of their upbringing. When they understand the unique message of Christianity, they return home stronger in this faith than when they left.

However, they remain, in a sense, in exile. Their conventional religion has become more subversive, standing in contrast to the materialism and self-centeredness they perceive “at  home.”

In both Singing in Babylon and Searching for Home, the protagonists live for a time in countries where another faith is predominant. In Quiet Deception, the background is the relentless change in the United States during the decades following World War II. This change is noted by one of the characters, a Vietnam veteran.

Distant Thunder, just released, happens in contemporary America, much of it in that iconic American experience of a journey west. But three of the characters have foreign experiences which contrast with those of the fourth, who’s never been out of the United States. One character recounts her experiences in the North African country of Algeria, once the domain of early church leaders like Augustine, but bereft of all but a few Christians today. “Nothing’s left but ruins,” another character agrees, referring to the ruins of ancient churches. Not persecution someone points out, “more like the Christian community just faded away.”

Perhaps by living “subversively,” not in violent subversion, but in the subversive life of love, they will be part of a renewal and prevent a similar fading away of their own faith communities.

Literature’s Divorce Between Secular and Religious

 

Today’s literature tends to be divided, like much of our culture, between secular and religious. The two types usually are marketed to different audiences. Religious fiction may be Jewish or Buddhist or from another religion, of course, but the Christian market has grown remarkably over the past few decades.

In a desire to reach secular readers, writers for the Christian market now explore “crossover” fiction, fiction that may appeal to both audiences. Crossover novels often suggest Christian themes but lack overt references to Christian practices or mention them only in a general way.

As both a writer and a Christian, how much Christian flavor should I impart to my novels? The answer for me is that it’s not an issue. I simply write the story, present the characters as they come to me, and attempt an honest telling of the story.

The conflict in my stories, as in my novel Searching for Home, emerges as the characters work out their salvation in an America becoming less religious and a non-Western world becoming more religious. The stories place the characters in a global context. The characters see their lives as related to the larger world, often away from a domestic church-related venue.  They doubt, sometimes are cynical, and may discover less than full answers to their questions.

I am drawn to novels of authors like Marilynne Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize winner for her moving story about a Christian pastor. Though my writing in no way approaches her wonderful prose, authors such as Robinson give me hope that novels with Christian characters can join the secular literary world. My market, I believe, is the Christian aware of a level beyond strict domestic issues and perhaps a few seekers searching for hints of God beyond the secular.

The Wired World: Pressure Versus Promise

In the not so distant past, when a writer finished a book, fiction or nonfiction, and it was accepted for publication, the process was simple. The author might make bookstore appearances for signing copies of her book and perform a few other tasks to promote the book, but basically, she spent working hours or spare time in writing.

Today an author is encouraged to create a web site, post regular blogs, maintain a presence on Facebook and perhaps on one or two other sites, prepare book trailers, tweet, and join in discussions with online groups. Also, of course, he should keep up with additional sites, like Goodreads and others that deal with his writing interests.

The wired world offers myriad opportunities never before available to anyone with an Internet connection, not just writers. The problem is that we can never take advantage of all these opportunities. We can never upload all the books to our Kindle or Nook that we want/need to read, skim all the online magazines, keep up with the news downloaded to our iPad, create meaningful comments on all the relevant blogs, or appear regularly on Facebook and other social media.

When do we have time to work? Or ponder? Or worship? Or read. Or enjoy time with family and friends? Or chill out? We miss one day of checking our email, and the next day we stagger in our attempt to catch up.

I’ve found out the hard way that I must accept boundaries and make choices. I must limit my wired time, delete immediately much that appears in my inbox, and concentrate each day on only a few tasks. What doesn’t get done, I will have to leave to God. Else life becomes a frantic guilt trip.

Come to think of it, I guess our lives have always been about exercising faith by choosing certain paths.

Dorothy Sayers And The Themes Of My Novels

 

Dorothy Sayers subtitled her book, The Mind of the Maker, as “An examination of God the creator reflected in the artistic imagination.” (Reviewed in From My Bookshelf on this site.) In this book, she dissects her own novel, Gaudy Night, a detective novel, into three parts: 1) A puzzle to be solved (the crime); 2) A human perplexity dealing with the relationships of the protagonists; 3) A conflict of values.

At novel’s end, the first, the puzzle is solved. In the second, the protagonists develop a new relationship, with possibilities for good or evil. Finally, the collision of values, is not “solvable” but the conflicting values, from their tension, may create a new, stronger value.

I applied Sayers’ ideas to my own novels. The romance, mystery, or other plot finds resolution. New relationships (both between the protagonists and between the protagonists and God) begin a growing process, that offer hope but not completion. Finally, a background theme in many of my novels is that of the Christian’s struggle in a postmodern world of shifting values.

In Singing in Babylon, the American protagonists feel exiled by their Christian faith within a country predominantly of another religion. When they return to the U.S., however, they sense exile from their consumer-hypnotized fellow citizens.

Quiet Deception unfolds in this country during the 1970’s, a boundary between a time of generally accepted common values and the time after, when those values changed and collided with others. Kim chooses a path already becoming less favored, one, in a cultural sense, of exile.

In Searching for Home, the protagonists constantly must exchange one home for another and eventually discover that the idea of home is at best a spiritual destination. No permanent home exists in this world.

My characters operate in a world that has lost its way, one in which values, including those common to most religious faiths, are questioned. Kate and Philip, Kim and Todd, Hannah and Patrick are remnant exiles. They struggle with the worth of old values as cultures collide.

 

Those Who Don’t Know History

 

History for some is a boring recitation of dates. Others see history as a rich source of stories, as well as a background for today’s decisions. Why did people in the past choose as they did? What were the wise choices that bless us to this day? George Washington chose not to continue in power as the first U.S. president but to relinquish power to another elected individual, beginning a tradition of elected officials peacefully giving up office.

What were the foolish choices? Why did desire for wealth lead early settlers in America to allow slavery rather than forbid it, even though founding fathers like James Oglethorpe strongly opposed it?

We often hear the quote “History repeats itself.” The complete quotation, however, is “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It’s a quote from the book, Reason in Common Sense, by George Santayana.

The first implies that we are victims of a ceaseless cycle that we cannot control. The second implies that we can influence the future if we remember and learn from the past.

Time and setting play a role in the stories I write. Why do the characters make the choices they do within the times in which they live? How do they handle the influences of the age around them?

When Children Are Caught in the Middle

Patrick’s child is kidnaped by his former wife in my novel Searching for Home . The woman is now married to a non-U.S. citizen and flees with her husband and the child to her husband’s country. Patrick isn’t able to contact his son and doesn’t even know where he is.

Child custody cases were among the most difficult of issues in my job as a U.S. consular officer working with American citizens overseas. Custody problems occur when an American and a foreign spouse separate or divorce and cannot resolve the custody of their children.

Of course, custody disputes may arise between two American parents. However, different backgrounds in religion, law, and culture can increase confusion and bitterness. In the most tragic cases, one parent takes the child and flees to the home country. Depending on laws in the home country, the left behind parent may experience varying degrees of difficulty visiting the child or serving a custody order or sometimes even finding the child.

Children in such cases may be used simply as a means to hurt the other parent, as can happen in this country as well. However, when one or both parents are concerned about cultural values and eternal matters, reconciliation becomes more difficult.

In generations past and in many countries today, a marriage is the joining of two families. Few of us want a return to the days of arranged marriages. Our drift toward individualism and our obsession with self fulfilment, however, can obscure the need for deeper values of community and faith.

No Pain, No Love?

My stories often begin with the death of a loved one or of a relationship. Perhaps it’s a subconscious wrestling with my father’s death when I was thirteen.

Though I want my stories to give hope, I see them as a slice from the characters’ lives. They have come from hard times and easy times and will go on to more of the same. Though I like my stories to end on a note of a victory won, an understanding gained, every wrong is not righted.

Hannah, in Searching for Home, resolves grief from her fiancé’s death and finds meaning, but his death remains a tragedy. God transforms wrong; he does not wave a magic wand that obliterates it.

The question of the suffering of innocents is probably the most difficult of all for Christians. You know the question: if God is both all powerful and all good, why does he allow suffering?

I do not presume to answer this question, but I think invalid the assumption that if God is both good and powerful, then he would not allow suffering. It assumes that if you love someone, you never cause them pain.

That, it seems to me, is false.

When my children were small, I took them to a giant who stuck needles in them. No baby or even young child could possibly understand about vaccines and the antibodies that develop from the pain inflicted with the giving of the vaccine. They have no conception that it protects them from diseases that could kill them: diphtheria or whooping cough or measles.

I don’t claim this illustration answers all theological questions, or even a minute part of them, concerning the world’s pain and evil. I only wish to suggest that we don’t just allow pain, we sometimes inflict it on those we love because of that love.